Mr. Ed

One of the best things about my job is getting to have amazing, if not entirely puzzling, conversations with both my students and the locals on a regular basis.  One of our friends, Edward, has now won the prestige of an entire post dedicated to him due to his own unpredictable witticisms.  On two separate occasions he has made me laugh so long and hard that tears were literally streaming down my face as I attempted to hold my splitting sides together.

A little background, Edward is perhaps the nicest, most keqi (a Chinese word indicating an excess of politeness...frankly, almost too much) guy I think I've ever met.  And I'm from the South, y'all.  He is considerate to a fault, incredibly diplomatic in approaching perceived problems, and prides himself on being a fashionable dresser.  Overall, a pretty put-together guy.  As such, I think it's fair to say we've all grown accustomed to a certain standard of speech, etiquette, etc, etc from him.  So, you can imagine my surprise when he and a couple of students were visiting our apartment one evening and he cut off the conversation to say, "Ok, but let's get serious guys.  How about we take off our shirts and tell you about the real reason we're here?"  Uh, I'm sorry, WHAT?

Needless to say, my jaw completely dropped as I looked around to the other faces present as if to confirm what I'd just heard.  The only thought I was capable of was "WHAT is HAPPENING?!?"  It turns out that Arianne totally understood he was making a Friends reference and found it brilliant.  The shock of it all took a little longer for me get over and was only exacerbated when Edward was ruffled by what he deemed a total overreaction from those of us still cackling.  He tried to calmly repeat himself, but what came out instead was a rather flustered "Ok, seriously guys.  Let's just take off your shirts and tell you why we're here."  I'm sorry, that will not be happening, good sir.  Definitely one of my all time favorite moments here.

Last night, some friends were over and the topic of the recent sports meet came up.  Edward had participated in the long jump and triple jump, winning second in the latter.  He was explaining that the school's prizes were pretty weak (20RMB for 1st place (about $3USD), 16RMB for 2nd, and so on) compared to his high school meets.  He fondly recalled the high school prizes as such:

"Oh yes, first prize was a p-n."
"A what?"
"Well, not a pen...you cook with it...a pan."
"...for...a high school boy??"
"Yes."
"Oh. Ok.  What was second prize?"
"A mattress."
"I'm sorry...a...mattress, is it?  A pan and a mattress??"
"Yes.  They were very good quality."

The conversation went on to envision the flourish with which the presiding officials would have presented the champions with such illustrious gifts.  Ah, I guess money really would pale in comparison.